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Category Archives: Consumer affairs
Howe calls for metrication progress
Lord Howe of Aberavon, the former Conservative Chancellor and Deputy Prime Minister, intervened in the Queen’s Speech debate on Tuesday to reiterate his call for the Government to complete the conversion of the UK’s weights and measures to metric units. … Continue reading
Posted in Consumer affairs, General, Road signs
Tagged bridge strikes, Department for Transport, dual-unit, metrication, weights and measures
30 Comments
Just how much does not being fully metric cost the UK economy?
One of our regular readers, John Frewen-Lord, has compiled a quiz, or rather two quizzes, to illustrate the waste resulting from the UK’s measurement muddle. The editors of Metric Views are unsure why a penalty of £1 per second has … Continue reading
The link between measurement skills and numeracy
Poor numeracy is blighting Britain’s economic performance and ruining lives, says a new charity launched to champion better maths skills.
Posted in Consumer affairs, Education, General, Media
Tagged adults, BBC, children, imperial, maths, measurement, metric, metrication, numeracy, questions, reports, sample, school, skills, test
15 Comments
Goodbye Imperial. Hello British weights and measures
We, the public, are encouraged by some politicians, by the DfT and by elements of the media to pick and mix our measurement units – to use both imperial and metric. So why has imperial as a system fallen from … Continue reading
Posted in Consumer affairs, General, History
Tagged British weights and measures, imperial measures, metric
22 Comments
Prospects improve for food energy labelling using SI units
One of our readers wrote to Sainsbury’s to ask that guideline daily amounts (GDAs) of energy shown on packaging should be shown in kilojoules, the SI unit, as well as or instead of kilocalories. He has received a reply that … Continue reading
Posted in Consumer affairs, Health, Law, Science
Tagged calorie, energy, food-labelling, joule
4 Comments
Speed, momentum and resistance
Which is preferable: a swift metric transition or a leisurely one? UKMA would have preferred the former. Successive UK governments have opted for the latter, believing that it carries less risk to their popularity. Ronnie Cohen assesses progress.
Posted in Consumer affairs, General, Media, Road signs
Tagged advance, metric, metrication, opposition, resistance
9 Comments
Why I became involved with measurement matters
One of our readers has written to explain why he became interested in the campaign to complete Britain’s prolonged metric changeover.
Posted in Consumer affairs, Education, Health, Road signs, Science, Technical, Transport
Tagged activities, measurement, metrication
15 Comments
Which? sees the light – and Panorama joins in
By an odd co-incidence both “Which?” magazine and the BBC’s flagship “Panorama” programme have recently run stories on the scams employed by the big supermarkets to prevent customers from comparing “value for money” in their weekly shopping. However, despite their … Continue reading
Posted in Consumer affairs, General, Law
Tagged measurement units, metrication, Panorama, unit pricing, weights and measures, Which?
17 Comments
Heading for the exit?
Problems of sovereign debt in the eurozone have seen the UK side-tracked in EU decision making, and, say some commentators, headed for the exit. Is this situation likely to impact on the UK’s stalled metric changeover?
Posted in Consumer affairs, Education, General, History, Road signs
Tagged EU, Eurozone, metrication
8 Comments
Christmas approaches so reach for a mail order catalogue
One of our regular contributors has submitted a comment about mail order catalogues, even though he admits there is no Metric Views article to which it relates. We are happy to respond by reproducing part of one of several articles … Continue reading
Posted in Consumer affairs, General
Tagged imperial scales, mail-order-catalogues, metric
10 Comments